


The Briefest Sort

by DaScribbla



Series: The Private and Intimate Life of the House [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sugar Daddy, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Guilt, Infidelity, Introspection, Jealousy, Multi, Past Underage, Pepper really gets the short end of the stick in this one, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 07:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13266300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: Anniversaries are always troublesome in this household.





	The Briefest Sort

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【铁虫】出会 The Briefest Sort](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029728) by [spacemonkey42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemonkey42/pseuds/spacemonkey42)



> In honor of that really sweet tumblr anon I got a few weeks ago. For the record, no, I don’t get off on the rape of 15-year-old kids :))))))))))

To mark their one-year anniversary, Tony had driven Peter out to Jersey to fuck in a hotel with a view of the bay. Peter was a month shy of seventeen at the time; Tony joked somewhat darkly that the only reason they were doing it in _Jersey_ of all Godforsaken places was to be legal for a change. Later that day, he had presented Peter with a debit card linked to his bank account. They had spent the next day at Tony’s penthouse with his daughter Maria.

Peter liked Maria a lot. She was a year and a half old now and clearly had inherited her parents’ intellect: already able to say certain words (albeit not yet with the ability to string them together), already walking (albeit unsteadily). Her red hair was all Pepper, as were her eyes, but —Peter privately speculated—had probably inherited Tony’s personality.

To his not-so-secret delight, Maria adored him. 

On the evenings he was over at the penthouse, which seemed to be with increasing regularity, Maria would escape the watchful eye of her nanny Daniela and race to hug his knees. Then he would obligingly swing her around, all while Tony leaned against the wall of the entryway with his arms crossed, grinning at the sight. Daniela would wait until Tony had had enough time to greet his daughter before whisking her away again, all the while shooting dark glances in Peter’s direction. 

“I swear she gets bigger every time I see her,” Peter said one day in the kitchen as Tony fixed them each cocktails (the prohibition that Tony had initially attempted to enforce had not held up under the force of Peter’s determination). 

“I know, right?” Tony handed him a Mojito. “I’m thinking about getting her started in the lab in a few years, I think she’d really take to it.”

“She’s got the genes for it.” Peter took a sip and licked his lips appreciatively. It was autumn and getting too cold for Mojitos, but it was no matter. 

“With her genes?” Tony said, “I think she could do anything.” 

They retired to the master bedroom later and stayed there until they got hungry and emerged to cook dinner. Pepper was inevitably working late on those nights.

She knew, and Peter and Tony knew that she knew. _How_ she had found out was a mystery, but Peter had gotten the message pretty quick when she had appeared in the doorway of his office and told him point-blank to _stay the fuck away from her husband._

“You don’t talk to him, you don’t look at him, and I swear to God—” and here she lowered her voice— “if I smell you on him one more time, I won’t hesitate to have you fired.”

Peter hadn’t known what to say and felt on some level that whatever reply he could make would be the wrong one. 

“If he talks to you, you tell him what he needs to know and leave,” Pepper had continued. “If he makes any kind of advance, that’s workplace harassment, and I don’t give a damn what people think, you report him. Do I make myself clear?”

Crystal clear. Peter kept up the pretense for a week before Tony cornered him and asked him why he had cooled off. _That_ had ended with lazy, hungry kisses in the corner of his office, Peter licking Tony’s lips, sucking on his tongue. He felt uneasy betraying Pepper like this (particularly when none of her threats came to fruition), but the feeling tended not to overstay its welcome. Especially after Tony took him to dinner at a restaurant that didn’t put prices on its menu, and then to the Four Seasons to fuck him facedown into the feather mattress. It was a routine that Peter never tired of: dinner, sex, and then drinks from the hotel room minibar, watching Tony have a cigarette out on the balcony (he’d tried to quit, he said, but the habit had its hooks in him) while he stretched out naked on the bed. He liked the routine a lot.

But he liked coming to the penthouse more. He liked seeing Maria, liked cooking meals there in the kitchen, wearing Tony’s clothes, savoring his scent on his body. Sometimes, when Pepper was traveling overseas, he would stay overnight. Those were the best times: when he got to fall asleep next to him and wake up in his arms. It put him in mind of the beach house, and it made him stupidly hopeful. Similar to how he felt in those mornings when he and Tony would cook breakfast for themselves and Maria. Perhaps one day everything would work out, and everyone could get what they wanted, he told himself on those mornings.

“C’me here, doll,” Tony would say, mouthing into his hair as he wrapped his arms around him from behind while Peter fixed up the coffee machine. It was a truth universally understood that Peter was _doll_ after sex and _sweetheart_ during. And Peter would grin lazily and roll his hips back against him (Maria wasn’t up yet; they were allowed). His neck was a painting of hickeys, red-purple and huge, stretching down his bare chest and stomach, almost under the band of his boxers. They were silk; Tony had purchased them for him a while ago. 

 

They were spending the second anniversary entirely at the penthouse. Pepper had a weekend-long meeting in Hong Kong and still wouldn’t be back until Tuesday at the earliest. Sure, it meant that they would have to rein things in, sexually speaking—screaming and a toddler did not a good match make—but in exchange for undisturbed domestic bliss? It was a worthy sacrifice. 

Even so, Daniela took Maria out to the movies Friday evening, giving them the run of the place. Tony made cocktails; Peter put on one of Tony’s hard rock records and swayed back and forth to it, taking careful sips of his drink. He was a month to eighteen and felt it, had felt it for a while, truth be told. He felt old as time. Tony took the drink out of his hand and placed it on the coffee table, then took his wrist in one hand and his hip in the other, waltzed him backward. Peter tilted his mouth up against his ear. 

“I want to fuck you tonight.”

Tony hummed and dipped his head down to kiss the shell of his ear. “You’re gonna be the death of me one of these days,” he said.

In the bedroom, Peter watched him remove his wedding band and place it on the dresser before climbing onto the bed and kissing him. 

“Why don’t you leave her?” he asked Tony later, gripping the headboard while Tony gripped his ass. “Is it really that hard?”

Tony took a handful of his hair and pulled his head down to kiss him so hard it stole Peter’s breath. 

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he told him.

“Tony—”

Another kiss. 

“You never said it,” Tony told him. He ran a hand down his face. “Come on. Let’s not worry, okay?”

They fucked, they made more drinks, they cooked dinner, and Peter didn’t mention it again. Maria came home, Tony gave Daniella the rest of the evening off (which she reluctantly accepted), and together they read Maria _Stellaluna_ and _Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus_ until she got tired. Tony put her to bed and then returned to the den, where Peter was already stripping down.

“Jesus,” he said, striding forward to wrap his hands around Peter’s as he started on the fly of his jeans. “You wanna start a riot?”

Peter grinned. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

Humming, Tony nuzzled into his bare shoulder. “Minx.”

He giggled—with nary a flush of shame—and stepped back to sprawl on the sofa, pulling Tony onto him. “So what’d you get me for year two?”

“Diamond cufflinks,” Tony answered and nipped his neck. “Figured there’s not much you couldn’t get with that card of yours, and anyway, we gotta class you up somehow.” Peter laughed and swatted his shoulder, catching Tony’s lower lip between his teeth before he kissed him. 

 

Next morning’s sunrise stained the sky the color of cotton candy, and Peter woke up first. Tony stirred as he climbed out of bed but didn’t wake. Peter showered and brushed his teeth (Tony kept a spare toothbrush for him in the medicine cabinet). 

“Looking good,” Tony said from where he leaned in the doorway, naked except for his second-best bathrobe. Peter was wearing the other one. He grinned and reached for Tony’s mouthwash as he strode inside and took the other sink, reached for his own toothbrush. Then he waited with arms crossed for Tony to finish brushing his teeth. 

Tony snaked an arm around his hip and pulled him against him, kissed him. 

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

Peter wrapped a hand around the lapel of Tony’s bathrobe. “Back to bed?” he suggested. One knee insinuated itself against his morning erection. Tony kissed him again. “You haven’t fucked me yet…” Peter reminded him.

Tony kissed him again, cupping his jaw. “Hm,” he said thoughtfully between kisses. “Guess I haven’t, huh?”

Peter began walking them in the direction of the bed. “Well? Are you gonna?”

Tony sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Peter into his lap. He looked troubled. “Did you mean what you said last night?” he asked. 

“I think said a lot of things last night,” Peter said. “Which one are you thinking of?”

“You know what I’m thinking of,” Tony said meaningfully. 

Peter did know. 

“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” he said at last. He pushed Tony on his back and reached for the drawer of the nightstand. “Come on. Let’s not worry about it, right?”

Peter rode him for a while before he let Tony roll him onto his stomach, laying his hands over his hands. The pillow smothered most of his panting, and the rest of his cries Tony claimed with his mouth, awkwardly twisting Peter’s head around to kiss him. 

“Tony—Tony—mmph—Jesus, _daddy—”_

The last word was muffled by the pillow, thank God; they’d given _that_ up a while back, but old habits died hard, and sometimes Peter couldn’t resist.

Afterward, they lay side-by-side and waited for their heart rates to normalize again. 

“Breakfast?” Peter suggested at last.

“Yeah,” Tony said after a moment. He sat up and dragged a hand through his hair. “Want waffles?” he asked. “I want waffles.”

 

Maria got up an hour after they did and found them washing the dishes from breakfast already. Tony warmed up some leftover waffles for her while she sat on the barstool and watched him in fascination. Tony asked her about the movie she and Daniella had seen the night before. Peter dried off the last of the plates and replaced them on the shelf above the sink. 

Tony had tried to end things after Maria was born. He’d called Peter into his office, like he had a hundred times before, and told him that they couldn’t keep it all up anymore, now that he was a father and had so many more responsibilities…

They had been damn near close to actually going through with it, might even have done it but for Peter telling him that he loved him. That had been the first time. Tony’s face had crumbled like the ruin of an old church. 

_“Baby, you can’t do that to me…”_ he’d said. _“That’s not fair.”_

But he was already reaching for him. 

And now Peter got to watch him butter his daughter’s waffles for her, leaning against the kitchen counter. The glasses from last night still sat in the sink, a sticky residue of alcohol left in each one. Peter poured two more cups of coffee and handed one to Tony, who pressed a kiss into his curls as he passed by. 

“Thanks, babe.”

Peter shot him a wink over his shoulder as he headed down the hall and into the bedroom. They hadn’t yet tidied up the bed; the top sheet was pulled three-quarters of the way off the mattress, the duvet on the floor. Peter snatched up one of Tony’s old T-shirts from the floor and pulled it on on his way back to the kitchen. 

He stopped short in the doorway.

Pepper was standing at the kitchen table, her purse on one of the chairs, shrugging out of her coat.

“… and then he had the nerve to cancel last minute after I’d already bought the plane tickets and booked the hotel,” she was saying to Tony, who was taking her coat for her. “Honestly, the whole thing was a disaster—”

She turned around just in time to see Peter frozen in the doorway in Tony’s AC/DC shirt and boxers. There was an ugly silence, enough that even Maria could sense the tension and paused in eating to look at the grown-ups with wide, anticipatory eyes. 

“Why am I not surprised,” Pepper breathed. She turned to Tony. “How long has he been here?”

“Peter,” Tony said sharply, “why don’t you take Maria and read her something in her room?”

Maria didn’t even question it, leaping out of her chair to grab his hand and pull him along to her nursery. Peter didn’t dare look back at Tony and Pepper who were still in the kitchen/Evidently they had a silent agreement to say nothing until their daughter was out of earshot. Sure enough, the moment Peter closed Maria’s door he could hear the murmur of voices rise from down the hall. 

“Whaddya want to read?” Peter asked Maria, trying not to worry too much. In answer, Maria shoved a book into his hand. _The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar._ Jesus. He remembered his mom reading that to him when he was young enough to still _have_ a mom. 

The nursery had a nook with a canopy over it, filled with pillows. The shelves loaded with picture books sat off to one side. They settled under the canopy, Maria nestling happily into his side as he started the story. From outside there came the sound of raised voices.

_“For once would it kill you to stay in the penthouse alone?”_

_“Pep, I know there’s no excuse—”_

“Why doesn’t Mama like you?” 

Startled, Peter glanced down at the little girl snuggled against him. She was staring up at him, confused. He opened his mouth to respond but came up empty. _‘Cause I’m fucking your dad_ wasn’t something you could say to a child. Although some would resolutely argue that he himself had been a child when he’d started.

He took the coward’s way out and just gave her a smile and a one-armed hug. Then he continued the story. 

They finished _The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, Verdi,_ and had almost gotten halfway through _Fox in Sox_ when there was a knock on the door. 

It was Tony, looking weary.

“It’s about time you got home,” he told him. “Come on. I’ll call you a taxi.”

Maria pouted and made a slightly garbled protest that Peter had to finish the story first. Tony came inside and picked her up, taking the book out of Peter’s hands. 

“I can read that to you, buttercup,” he told her. “Pete’s gotta get home.”

 

On his way out, he passed Pepper, who was seated in the living room—on the sofa that he’d pulled Tony onto the night before, actually—looking worn out. Briefly, he caught her eye. Red, raw.

He couldn’t hold her gaze for long.

 

It was about noon when he got home; he’d stopped at a coffee shop for brunch so he could collect himself and also prepare to face May again. It was her day off. Sure enough, he found her making lunch in the kitchen. Grilled cheese with slices of apple. It smelled good.

“Hey, you.” May looked over her shoulder as he came in and dropped his keys on the island. “Where’ve you been?”

“Stayed at MJ’s.” The lie came swiftly to his lips. It was mostly pointless. 

“Again?” May put her plate down on the island and went to the fridge to pull out a pitcher of lemonade. 

“Uh, yeah.”

“How’s she doing?” May seemed distracted, concentrated on pouring her drink. If it weren’t the latest of many, many of these conversations, Peter would never have realized that she was gently testing him.

“Pretty good,” he said, just as casually. “She got into Howard. Doing some sort of art thing for a scholarship now. And Liz is coming back for break in a few weeks so, you know, she’s making plans for that, too.”

The last time he’d stayed over at MJ’s had been a month ago. They’d gotten drunk on her mom’s pinot noir and made an executive decision not to talk about their relationships (she was feeling lonely and neglected, and he knew better than to think that she would ever take his side with respect to his own situation). They had just watched _Grace and Frankie_ and taken bets on when the title characters would make out. 

“What is it?” May was watching him with a furrow in her brow. All lightness had left her tone. _Cut the bullshit._ The words hung in the air, not needing to be said. 

He went to the counter and sat on it, dragging his hands over his face. He felt as though he hadn’t slept in years. 

“Just tired,” he said at last. 

May blew out a sigh. “When are we going to be honest with each other?” she asked him. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know… you’re almost eighteen,” she said. “I can’t make your decisions for you. But, you know,” she continued, “you’re going to look back on this when you’re twenty-five, or thirty-five, and I think that you’re going to feel very different about this whole thing.” He didn’t reply. “Peter, look at me.” He glanced up at her, hunching his shoulders. 

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeated at last. He slid off the counter and went to his bedroom before she could call his name and tell him to come back.

 

A box appeared at the door of the apartment two days later addressed to Peter. He opened it in his room to find two diamond encrusted cufflinks winking up at him in his fluorescent overhead light. A note accompanied it.

_Was going to give them to you the morning after. Dinner on the 16th?_

Yes, dinner would be fine, would be great even. Peter would take anything he could get. But even he understood the code within the sparsely-worded note: _dinner_ implied a restaurant, an opportunity to wear those cufflinks that Peter sure as hell wouldn’t get anywhere else, a hotel room afterward. Mini soaps, mini shampoos and conditioners, mini bar. Parting ways late that night or early the next morning. No wife, no daughter, no nanny, and closeness of the only briefest sort. 

He would have to take what he could get. And take it with a smile.


End file.
